MANDATORY health insurance

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Can we get a grip?

David Frum, National Post
ntnp_20090815_a023_canwegetagrip_57272_mi0001.jpg
Robert Spencer, Getty Images

The comparison on the website is arresting. A photograph of President Obama in unattractive blue jeans, preparing to throw the first ball at a baseball game. The caption: "You know who else wore funny pants?" Place the cursor on the image and it shifts to an older photograph, black and white, of a familiar evil figure clad in lederhosen. "Hitler!"

Nearby is a photograph of Barack Obama with Henry Louis Gates and Officer James Crowley in the White House garden. "You know who else had beer summits?" Fade to an image of a Munich beer garden. "Hitler!

The website (ObamaIsLiterallyHitler.tumblr.com)is obviously joking. Or rather: One wishes it were obvious. The unfunny fact is, however, that Obama=Hitler analogies are spreading like wildfire on the political right.

"Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate," said Rush Limbaugh on his Aug. 6 radio program. That same day Limbaugh itemized "similarities between the Democrat party of today and the Nazi party in Germany." Among them: The Nazis mistrusted big business, worried about pollution, initiated make-work projects and condemned smoking. Limbaugh concluded: "It is liberalism that is the closest you can get to Nazism."

Fox News's newest star, Glenn Beck, has insisted repeatedly that Obama wishes to lead the United States to a "fascist state."

The House of Representatives' version of health care reform offered coverage for "end of life counseling." This legislation inspired Sarah Palin to accuse Obama of planning "death panels" to extinguish the old and the disabled -an accusation seized and repeated by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

My NewMajority.com sent a reporter to a health care town hall in Maryland, hardly a conservative state. He wrote: "Twenty minutes into my two-hour wait to get a seat at Senator Ben Cardin's town hall event, I started keeping a 'Nazi tally' by counting references I overheard to Adolf Hitler, Germany, or the Nazi Party. ... 'This is exactly how Nazi Germany began!' was a standard echo heard in line." There's a lot wrong with Barack Obama's health care plan, but no, this is not exactly how Nazi Germany began. Not even a little bit close. In fact, the analogy seems so self-evidently crazy that it may baffle outsiders as to how any conservative, no matter how irate, could possibly imagine such a thing.

The answer begins with the declining impact of the word "socialism," the seemingly more obvious term to apply to big, expensive government programs. Recent polling in the U. S. has found that voters are reacting less negatively to the word than they did a generation ago. Plus, support for Barack Obama from people like Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker has rendered that particular charge less credible. "Fascism" packs more voltage.

The Nazi talk also reflects the impact on Republican politics of supporters of Ron Paul, the libertarian Texas congressman who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. For their own internal ideological reasons, Paulistas use the term "fascism" very promiscuously. Paul did not win
many votes, but he raised a lot of money and inspired intense enthusiasm.

The Paulistas make a natural activist base for an opposition party -and an eager audience for angry talk radio. In order to gain their support, many Republicans have begun to talk their inflammatory language. The man who attended President Obama's Portsmouth, NH, event carrying a placard endorsing assassination and bearing a -legal -firearm strapped to his leg was a Ron Paul supporter.

Contra Rush Limbaugh, history's actual fascists were not primarily known for their anti-smoking policies or generous social welfare programs. Fascism celebrated violence, anti-rationalism and hysterical devotion to an authoritarian leader. To date, the Obama administration has fallen rather short in these departments.

Perhaps uncomfortably aware of the shortcoming, the hardliners have developed -okay, invented really -their own mythology about Obama "brownshirts." (The popular conservative website Red- State.org literally uses the term.)

The complaint rests on a single case -- that of conservative activist Kenneth Gladney, who got into a scuffle at a town hall in St. Louis, Missouri. The altercation was captured on video and you can watch it on YouTube. What you'll see is a man, already on the ground, and another man stepping back in order to avoid tripping over him. The man on the ground is Gladney. Gladney walked away from the confrontation and later went to hospital, where he was treated for light injuries and released the same day. Whatever happened and whoever started it, this happily bloodless encounter bears not even the most glancing resemblance to the brutality that made Hitler's brownshirts notorious.

And yet, look up Gladney's name online and he's suddenly a poignant martyr.

Can we get a grip here? It is possible to express opposition to a president's policies without preposterous name-calling -without diminishing and disparaging the unique experiences of those who did actually suffer from actual persecution by actual Nazis. After all, you know who else trafficked in hysterical exaggeration? That's right: Hitler!
 
I said this earlier in the thread, and I think it bears repeating:
The more I think of this issue, the angrier I get. What I want to know is this: the grassroots supporters that got Obama elected in the first place, where are they all through this? Why is the right allowed to set the tone of this discussion/distort the facts/manipulate discourse? The left needs to get out there and dispel the myths, and basically out-shout the right.

I'm not saying you're all doing nothing, of course, but you need numbers, just like you needed (and had) during the primary and election season. Mobilize, just like you all did then! Don't let this chance slip away without being heard, because who knows when it'll come up again.

Please, make yourselves heard. Write letters. Write to the White House, there's an e-mail address on their website. Tell Obama you don't want the public option dropped. Call or write to your senators. Don't let profit win over quality of life. Don't let Rush and Glen et al spread their lies and fear.
 
This is the sort of bullshit being propagated by the GOP:

As chairman of the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, knows a thing or two about health care. But some of what he knows just isn’t true.

“I’m 59,” Mr. Blunt said last week during a meeting with Post-Dispatch reporters and editors. “In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn’t get it replaced.”

We fact-checked that. At least 63 percent of hip replacements performed in Canada last year and two-thirds of those done in England were on patients age 65 or older. More than 1,200 in Canada were done on people older than 85.

“I didn’t just pull that number out of thin air,” Mr. Blunt said in a subsequent interview. It came, he said, from testimony before the House Subcommittee on Health by “some people who are supposed to be experts on Canadian health care.”
 
Hey, VP, are you going to the U2 shows in Toronto? I'll be there and I'm bringing my hammer and sickle, and I'll be wearing red from head to toe. We can all have a great big communist socialist party, complete with propaganda, songs, and lots of marching around the Rogers Centre.

What do you say?
 
^^Please. My former father-in-law had his hips and knees replaced so many times, he was practically bionic.


Hey, VP, are you going to the U2 shows in Toronto? I'll be there and I'm bringing my hammer and sickle, and I'll be wearing red from head to toe. We can all have a great big communist socialist party, complete with propaganda, songs, and lots of marching around the Rogers Centre.

What do you say?

Ha. Yes, I'll be there. I'll get out my communist socialist songbook and practice. I look forward to it. Can we also get medical personnel to be there so we can all receive free, unnecessary care that other people have to pay for? :hyper:
 
It's funny that the same party that has for decades been trying to horn in on women's medical decisions is now shitting themselves about rumors of having to submit to the same kinds of treatment.

There was a woman they showed on one of the news channels, either CNN or MSNBC, protesting at a town hall, and I kid you not, her sign read "Get your laws off my body!"

Yeah, I'll remember that next time they're marching for life or whatever they call it.
 
This is the sort of bullshit being propagated by the GOP:

:hmm:

Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors
By Jennifer Graham (CP) – 2 days ago

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there's a critical need to make Canada's health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

Doig says she doesn't know what a proposed "blueprint" toward patient-centred care might look like when the meeting wraps up Wednesday. She'd like to emerge with clear directions about where the association should focus efforts to direct change over the next few years. She also wants to see short-term, medium-term and long-term goals laid out.

"A short-term achievable goal would be to accelerate the process of getting electronic medical records into physicians' offices," she said. "That's one I think ought to be a priority and ought to be achievable."

A long-term goal would be getting health systems "talking to each other," so information can be quickly shared to help patients.

Doig, who has had a full-time family practice in Saskatoon for 30 years, acknowledges that when physicians have talked about changing the health-care system in the past, they've been accused of wanting an American-style structure. She insists that's not the case.

"It's not about choosing between an American system or a Canadian system," said Doig. "The whole thing is about looking at what other people do."

"That's called looking at the evidence, looking at how care is delivered and how care is paid for all around us (and) then saying 'Well, OK, that's good information. How do we make all of that work in the Canadian context? What do the Canadian people want?' "

Doig says there are some "very good things" about Canada's health-care system, but she points out that many people have stories about times when things didn't go well for them or their family.

"(Canadians) have to understand that the system that we have right now - if it keeps on going without change - is not sustainable," said Doig.

"They have to look at the evidence that's being presented and will be presented at (the meeting) and realize what Canada's doctors are trying to tell you, that you can get better care than what you're getting and we all have to participate in the discussion around how do we do that and of course how do we pay for it."

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



:up:
 
Ha. Yes, I'll be there. I'll get out my communist socialist songbook and practice. I look forward to it. Can we also get medical personnel to be there so we can all receive free, unnecessary care that other people have to pay for? :hyper:

Well, this being Canada, are we really guaranteed to get the sub-standard health care we all know and love up here?

I mean, let's look at this scenario: We're waiting in the GA line and Elfa says something to set me off (Hi, BoMac, how are you?) and I just obliterate him. He'll be clinging to life, but because of our third world health care system, he'll be even lucky to see a doctor that night, let alone a week from then.

:hmm: On second thought, maybe living in a communist socialist paradise does have its perks.
 
It's also funny that the party who used to be concerned only with the rich and the businesses they own, now suddenly is all about the common people and the state of their health.

And their idiot constituents are buying it.
 
Can someone please find me a health care system in the world that doesn't have its problems?

Does Canada have issues with its system? Yes. If I was poor and was unfortunate enough to get brain cancer, could I get free and excellent treatment expeditiously? The answer is also, yes.

I'll stick to our system, thank you very much.
 

There is no system in the world that couldn't use improving in some ways.

There have been cries for years now that our health care system is failing us. There has been talk about instituting a 2-tier system here that utilizes both public and private medicine. But guess who the worst of the doomsday folks are? The right wing. No surprise there, huh? Fortunately, Canadians are too attached to our current system to allow that to happen in any significant way.

Meanwhile, despite our supposed faults, we still have a higher life expectancy than the US, a lower infant mortality rate than the US, and we manage to do it for less money per capita than the US currently does.

So tell me again how we're failing?
 
I think the biggest con of this whole debate are the working class conservatives that have been conned into defending the insurance companies. Defending them like they honestly believe the insurance companies have their back... WTF?! When I go to your homes, meet you at the hospital, or in the dr's office you can't wait to bitch about your insurance company, you can't wait to tell me how many times they've screwed you over and how they don't care, but now you want to defend them?

There is no real competition, they work in cohoots, they control the medical field, doctors will be the first to admit it... Oh, it infuriates me!
 
Meanwhile, despite our supposed faults, we still have a higher life expectancy than the US, a lower infant mortality rate than the US, and we manage to do it for less money per capita than the US currently does.



be careful.

a post like this could wind up subjecting us all to the UN Human Development Index.
 
Oh, c'mon. Anybody with any political knowledge whatsoever knows that the Nazi party is far right while socialism, specifically democratic socialism, is moderately left. What one party in Germany decided to call themselves doesn't change that.

I'll be more than happy to set you straight on the subject if you'd like to start a new thread.
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system !
--Gregor Stasser, Nazi ideologist
If they were right-wing they were right-wing socialists and only in comparison to Stalin and the Bolshevik revolutionaries.
 
Meanwhile, despite our supposed faults, we still have a higher life expectancy than the US, a lower infant mortality rate than the US, and we manage to do it for less money per capita than the US currently does.

So tell me again how we're failing?
Life expectancy has very little to do with health care. It differs wildly just in the United States say between Washington D.C. and Fargo, North Dakota. And the differences have nothing to do with the quality or access to health care.

Infant mortality stats can be deceiving as well. Fact is, we deliver more high-risk or "difficult delivery" babies that frankly, other many countries would routinely abort, deemed as not worth the extra financial strain on the healthcare system.
 
Am I the only one here who thinks a public option isn't enough? That Obama and the Democrats in congress are wrong when they say that we need a "uniquely American solution" that "incorporates public and private elements"? That there is no need for any private elements at all? That full-blown, 100%, real, authentic, universal healthcare, period, is the best option? This is driving me crazy. It's not even Republicans who are too afraid of full-blown universal healthcare...it's Democrats too!

We finally have a Democrat in the White House and Democratic control in congress, including a 60 seat super majority in the senate, universal healthcare should absolutely BREEZE through this congress, but it's not breezing through anything. It absolutely astonishes me that the idea of universal healthcare is causing this much fear and anxiety and debate. It floors me. It's not that complicated. Private insurance companies don't give a shit about any of us, their polices dictate that as soon as someone looks like they might actually need healthcare in the near future, they're not covered anymore. Universal healthcare gives more people coverage, and if the government is the provider, then our votes give us a small way of holding it accountable(it might not be much, but it's something), something we never ever have with private insurance companies.

Everybody should want full-blown universal healthcare, and when I hear SENATORS saying "We have to work together to find out a better solution, which is still a uniquely American solution, which is public and private. We’re not, you know, Great Britain. We’re not Canada. We’re not Netherlands[Added by me: (it's THE Netherlands, THE Netherlands, damn it!)]. We’re America", like Canada and Great Britain and the Netherlands are horrible, embarrassing places, it totally sucks hope out of me for our country. That's Max Baucus, a Democratic senator from Montana.

Bill Maher is right, we don't have a liberal party and a conservative party anymore, we have a conservative party and a crazy party.
 
I'll be more than happy to set you straight on the subject if you'd like to start a new thread.

We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system !
--Gregor Stasser, Nazi ideologist

If they were right-wing they were right-wing socialists and only in comparison to Stalin and the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Uh, no, that's okay, you don't need to "set me straight," thanks. I'm good.

And yes, I'd depend on a Nazi ideologue to accurately portray what the party became. :lol:

Life expectancy has very little to do with health care. It differs wildly just in the United States say between Washington D.C. and Fargo, North Dakota. And the differences have nothing to do with the quality or access to health care.

Infant mortality stats can be deceiving as well. Fact is, we deliver more high-risk or "difficult delivery" babies that frankly, other many countries would routinely abort, deemed as not worth the extra financial strain on the healthcare system.

Are you for real? These things have little/nothing to do with access to or quality of health care? Must be superior genes, then.

Soooo, which countries routinely encourage aborting difficult pregnancies? Not here, that's for sure. That must be another right-wing bogeyman story. For the record, my difficult pregnancy/delivery was handled with the utmost care and concern by my health care providers, resulting in a beautiful and healthy baby girl. Abortion wasn't mentioned once. Nor do I know any other woman for whom abortion has ever been suggested.
 
Life expectancy has very little to do with health care. It differs wildly just in the United States say between Washington D.C. and Fargo, North Dakota. And the differences have nothing to do with the quality or access to health care.

How does one write this with a straight face?

"Nothing" do with quality or access to health care?

Doctors around the world's reaction = :crack:
 
For the record, my difficult pregnancy/delivery was handled with the utmost care and concern by my health care providers, resulting in a beautiful and healthy baby girl.

Just think: if you had no insurance, or lived in a country with sub-standard health care, the world (meaning me) may have been denied wonderfully delicious cakes.

Sarah is making one for our communist Nazi socialist festival at the Rogers Centre, right?
 
Are you for real? These things have nothing to do with access to or quality of health care? Must be superior genes, then.
Between N.D. and D.C, more to do with drug abuse and gang violence. And around the world, more to do with nutrition, lack of clean water and insect-borne disease.
Soooo, which countries routinely encourage aborting difficult pregnancies? Not here, that's for sure. That must be another right-wing bogeyman story. For the record, my difficult pregnancy/delivery was handled with the utmost care and concern by my health care providers, resulting in a beautiful and healthy baby girl.
Sorry, I was referring to the propaganda states of China, Cuba, Russia et cetera.
 
Just think: if you had no insurance, or lived in a country with sub-standard health care, the world (meaning me) may have been denied wonderfully delicious cakes.

Sarah is making one for our communist Nazi socialist festival at the Rogers Centre, right?

I think she's making one depicting you beating meeting elfa. Either that or one of Lenin. :up:
 
Between N.D. and D.C, more to do with drug abuse and gang violence. And around the world, more to do with nutrition and insect borne disease.

Do you understand statistics at all? Statistically, the number of violence-related deaths in the US would be so small compared to natural deaths that it wouldn't make a statistically significant difference in life expectancy for the nation. Same with drug-related deaths. The differences between places within the US doesn't matter - it's the whole that we're looking at when comparing numbers between countries. Urban vs rural deaths combine to make an average, just as they do in Canada. Also, we're not discussing nations for which lack of nutrition or insect-borne illness is a factor. Try again.

Discussing this minutiae is ridiculous, and just obfuscating the entire issue.


Eta - well said, namkcuR :up:
 
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